Watermark: Britannia
Literature: Kennedy 33;
Glasgow 39, IV/IV.
Provenance: The Fine Art Society, London 2016
Exhibitions: Sale Catalogue, The Fine Art Society, James McNeill Whistler. Prints, London, 2016, N. 13.
Three relaxed figures around a table are reading intently by lamplight; the woman on the right is Whistler’s half-sister Deborah Delano Haden (1825 - 1908), on the left, her husband Francis Seymour Haden (1818 - 1910) surgeon, etcher and collector. In the middle sits Seymour’s medical partner James Reeves Traer (ca 1834 - 1867). The interior is of the Hadens' London apartment in 62 Sloane Street, Chelsea.
In 1858, Deborah Haden and her daughter modelled for Whistler's first major oil painting At the Piano (now Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH, inv. ). The following year, the painting was rejected at the Salon in Paris. Disappointed by this failure and yet encouraged by the favourable reception of the French Set in Britain, Whistler moved to London in 1859, where he made the present print and where he remained for most of his life.
There was no published edition of the print.
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